Friday, October 29, 2010

Uranium and Mining Stocks Recovering

The Energy Report: Between the first quarter of 2009 and the first half of 2010, uranium tested $40 on the downside about three times. Has it found solid support? Also, what minimum level does it need to maintain for companies to be profitable?

Geordie Mark: That's a very good question. Certainly it has had a lot of technical support at $40 with a lot of buying strength coming in at that level. I'd say there's been even more buying strength recently. So that's a lot of strength. For the ultimate strength of investment health of this sector, I think we're looking at numbers north of $65. In fact, it would probably have to be higher than that to warrant risking venture capital for exploration. Also, you need to see higher prices for investment in large-scale, leveraged development-stage projects. Spot is now around $52, and we see positive movement there in terms of pricing with the long-term price at $60.

TER: You see positive movement, but it sounds like mining uranium is risky now. Is that right?

GM: Yes, mining does have technical risk. That's correct. As part of an offset to that, the projects we see going into production, certainly over the next year or so, are the lower-cost projects involving lower capital expenditure for development. Those are called in-situ recovery operations and they have a low-cost basis. So you're looking at cash costs of $30 per pound or less. They are the ones that can accommodate the current commodity price, but not the larger-scale projects requiring significant injection of capital. That's why we've seen delays in that development pipeline; $40 spot prices make it difficult to justify large, higher-cost projects. However, in our view, we do need those larger projects to sustain increasing demand. (more)

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